Bret Stephens: The Typist with a Pulitzer Prize

Yesterday, The New York Times answered a question no one asked: What if Bret Stephens were a (Sears) portrait of Ben Shapiro as a grown man? Though the Times did not offer complimentary brooms and dustpans—to sweep away the feathers—for readers who came too close to the halo on Stephens’s headshot, it nonetheless answered its own question by saying, in effect, “BS would write the same BS, but with better editors and no fact checkers.” Yesterday’s BS lingers because it is the product of ignorance and a vile insinuation: the former being Stephens’s unintentional compliment as criticism in which he compares Bibi Netanyahu to Richard Nixon, while the latter is Stephens’s suggestion that, by refusing (unlike Nixon) to resign from office, Jews will die—because it is indefensible for Netanyahu to stay in office.

About the comparison to Nixon, Stephens ignores the president’s deserved reputation as Israel’s savior. Where his Secretary of State wanted his coreligionists to bleed—to suffer with a patient shrug and to bend low with bated breath—so as to whisper their humbleness, where his Secretary of Defense wanted to thwart the Jews by scorning their nation, President Nixon was righteous among the nations. He ordered the Pentagon to send Israel everything that could fly—he gave Israel what she needed, and more, until victory was won. After that day, until her last day, Golda Meir referred to Nixon as “My President.”

Stephens does not inconvenience himself with facts. Instead, he says Netanyahu never puts moral considerations before political considerations. Translation: The Jewish leader of the Jewish nation puts all other considerations—including consideration in the form of cash—ahead of the sole consideration that can save his soul.

By slandering one Jew, Stephens damns all Jews. His column is a bloodless—for now—libel against the Jews. From such filth does a Pulitzer Prize winner ply his trade.